Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to take part in this take note debate particularly because I actually have a private member's motion before the House dealing with Iraq. Motion No. 279 proposes:
That in the opinion of this House, the government should endorse the formation of an international criminal tribunal for the purpose of prosecuting Saddam Hussein and all other Iraqi officials who are responsible for crimes against humanity, including the unlawful use of force, crimes committed in contravention of the Geneva Convention and the crime of genocide.
I would like first to address the rationale behind my motion. Many people observing the debate tonight will have heard many members discussing geopolitical considerations, the question of war and peace, the question of the United States foreign policy and its relationship to the United Nations. However I am afraid that perhaps not enough people realize the extent to which we are dealing with an utterly morally bankrupt and tyrannical regime which is arguably the most vicious and tyrannical regime on the face of the world today.
World leaders in the past have drawn parallels between Saddam Hussein and other great figures of political and moral evil of the century like Adolf Hitler. I submit that such comparisons are not entirely outlandish.
I mention these things because it is important to understand with whom it is we are dealing. Saddam Hussein's regime, as was mentioned, has been responsible for the unlawful deaths, execution and torture of countless hundreds of thousands of his own civilians and hundreds of thousands of citizens of other nations such as Iran and Kuwait and the disputed territories of Kurdistan.
The United Nations has repeatedly reprimanded the Government of Iraq for its atrocious human rights record, a record which among other things has former detainees testifying as to torture techniques that include “branding, electric shocks administered to the genitals and other areas, beating, burning with hot irons, suspension from rotating ceiling fans, dripping acid on the skin, rape, breaking of limbs, denial of food and water, and threats to rape or otherwise harm relatives. The security forces in Iraq have killed many of their torture victims and mutilated their bodies before returning them to their families.” Also as a gesture they require the victims' families to pay for the cost of their execution. That is the kind of regime we are dealing with. It is a regime which simply cannot be reasoned with.
I have heard many members of this place say that we must fully exhaust all avenues of diplomacy. No rational person could possibly disagree with that proposition. The problem is that for seven years now the civilized world has attempted to implement and enforce United Nation Security Council Resolution 687 which requires the destruction of all weapons of mass destruction and facilities for the production of such weapons in Iraq.
For seven years the regime of Saddam Hussein has belligerently and deliberately lied, ducked, dodged, obfuscated and refused to co-operate with the order of international civilization in the unanimously passed resolution of the security council.
The United Nations, the United States, the European powers, the Arab neighbours of Iraq, and Canada as a middle power have all played a long and exhaustive role in attempting to find a diplomatic and peaceful resolution to what could be a devastating and violent conflict.
The diplomatic solution has not worked. That is why we are now at this juncture today. I emphasize this because many of those who have expressed enormous reticence at even Canada's symbolic involvement in military action, principally on the part of the United States, continue to emphasize the need for a diplomatic solution with their heads in the sand. They seem not to recognize that those diplomatic solutions have been tried and tried, have been exhausted and have proven not to work.
I could quote the head of the UNSCOM team of weapons investigators that has been operating in Iraq. He recently reported to the United Nations Security Council on discussions he had with Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariz Aziz.
He says that these talks were characterized from the beginning “by extended statements by the Iraqi side to which no even remotely equal reply was invited, accepted or apparently wanted. Moments of abuse and denigration of the UNSCOM and its professional officers, an attempt literally to apportion all blame to UNSCOM past and present for the disarmament task had not been completed and sanctions on Iraq had remained in force, and the deputy prime minister spoke at length about how Iraq had divested itself long ago of all its weapons of mass destruction, their components and their means to produce them,” and on and on and on and.
This is the kind of diplomacy the United Nations faces when dealing with Iraq. Diplomacy cannot be exercised with a stone wall. Diplomacy cannot be exercised with a tyrant who refuses to negotiate. Diplomacy cannot be exercised with a tyrant who places no value on the lives of his own people.
There is one thing and one thing alone that Saddam Hussein understands: the force he has used so ruthlessly on his own people.
Let us get one thing perfectly clear. This is not some theoretical threat we are talking about. This is not some exercise in American sabre rattling that some of our more colourful members would suggest.
We are talking about a tyrannical lunatic who has control over weapons that could potentially kill millions of innocent civilians in terrorist attacks. Other members have discussed the verified evidence of chemical and biological weapons still in the possession of Iraq.
According to UNSCOM'S February 4 report there are “38,000 chemical weapons, 480,000 litres of live CWHs, 6 scud mobile missile launchers, 19 missiles, 30 special chemical missile warheads, hundreds of other chemical and conventional warheads, hundreds of chemical weapon production items, 690 tonnes of chemical weapon agents, 3,000 tonnes of chemical weapon precursors and ingredients and a 1,000 kilometre range super gun.”
They have all confirmed the existence of industrial scale VX nerve gas production facilities and production of four tonnes of VX, one drop of which can kill. They have discovered 19,000 litres of botulinum, 8,400 litres of anthrax and 2,000 litres of aflatoxin. I do not even know what all these things are but I am reliably informed that each one of them is enormously deadly.
I want to close with this sentiment. If we do not join our allies in forceful action to intervene in this tyrant's refusal to obey the international order, are we prepared as peace loving Canadians to wake up some day in the not too distant future to hear broadcasts on our television news that Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Tehran or Kuwait City have been decimated with deadly biological weapons launched from Iraq? Are we prepared for that fate?
I submit we are not, and that is why I submit that the most peaceful thing we can do is to support our allies in intervening aggressively once it is determined that all diplomatic means to this problem have been exhausted.